What is your opinion?

I'm about 100 pages in. While I don't think there's much new here, I find the way the author synthesizes the info to be interesting and unique.

Plus, you gotta love an author who writes, "Humans are not descended from apes; humans ARE apes."

His questions about sexuality into his research...

How do I know that? Easy. He's limited the scope of his speculation to the last ten thousand years and focused largely on cultural rather than physiological factors (which, in the case of Homo sapiens, go back roughly fifteen times longer, and in the case of hominids in general, probably three hundred times that long).

Ten thousand years is barely a minute on the geological day clock of human history...

BTW, I published a critique on another article with a similar theme in a national magazine way back in the early 70's, so this stuff is hardly new to me... I see Oscar Wilde is quoted in the review I read; I think it was Wilde who also noted how every generation delights in its discovery of sexual pleasure and naively assumes it is the first to do so...

In my day it was Desmond Morris's volume, "The Naked Ape" that caused all the stir. The big point was that the pair-bond was essential for raising human children with their long maturation requirements, and as noted on another thread, polygamous societies need to suppress jealousy in order to survive.

http://www.amazon.com/Naked-Ape-Zoologists-Study-Animal/dp/0385334303

That lesson is obvious to me as a student of history reading about LDS violence in "Under The Banner of Heaven" (with modern and early LDS tie-ins found in the Lafferty killings, the LeBaron/Allred Murders, and blood atonement in Brigham Young's day). And even with that, polygamy has failed to "catch on" in modern societies...

I note, too, that there is a disingenuous suppression by many polygamists of claims regarding the joys of sexual desire (doubtless with a hidden agenda that secretly notes otherwise, at least for the privileged few); this despite the claims of individuals such as Terryl Givens...

http://www.sexatdawn.com/

Sex at dawn. Better than a nooner. :D

In terms of the biological/genetic aspect, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_evolutionary_genetics#Genetic_differences_between_humans_and_other_great_apes for relevant info.

To say that humans ARE apes is akin to saying that apes are single-celled primordial lifeforms - true if you're talking about eons of time ago.

Psychologically, sociologically, technologically, culturally and in many other respects humans are demonstrably NOT apes. We have far, far surpassed them. The Internet alone that we use to post these messages is clear evidence of that.

Professor!

You state that "(w)e have far, far surpassed (apes)." I am not a student of evolution, but isn't the presumption that our ways (psychologically, sociologically, technologically, culturally and in many other respects) as being far superior to those of apes dramatically homocentric (google homocentricity)?

If I understand evolution correctly, each species proceeds through time at least maintaining and preferably increasing its capability to survive in its ecologic niche (or perhaps new ones as they develop or as the species exploits them). To rate one as "superior" to another should be to consider only the survivability between the species. All other factors (psychologic, sociologic, technologic, cultural, and many others) mean nothing unless they are considered only as ways to increase the survivability of the species.

I'm not sure if the homocentric perspective is yours, but I can easily see where most readers who read that "(w)e have far, far surpassed (apes)" would presume that you mean we are far "better" than apes in ways more than simple survivability.

Another way to say it might be that evolution has no "interest" in factors other than those that contribute to the survivability of the species.

So did you mean we are "better" than apes, or that we have gained presumably better survivability via advances in the factors that you have identified?

ps: After further review, perhaps I should have used the term "anthropocentric" instead of "homocentric".



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/26/2010 12:24PM by Willum.

There are a lot of differences like that between species of apes. We're all apes because we don't have tails. Monkeys have tails. That's the distinguishing factor. We're all mammals too, btw. Going all the way back to single-cell organisms isn't really an accurate comparison.

I started to read it, but I switched to Jared Diamond's "3rd Chimpanzee".

My motto's always been when its right its right, why wait until the middle of the cold dark night?

;P